I cover the video game industry, write about gamers, and review video games.
You can follow me on Twitter and hit me up there if you have any questions or comments you'd like to chat about.
Disclosure: Many of the video games I review were provided as free review copies. This does not influence my coverage or reviews of these games.
I do not own stock in any of the companies I cover. I do not back any Kickstarter projects related to video games. I do not fund anyone in the industry on Patreon.

Violence And Video Games In America

Recently, the NRA blamed violent video games and other media for school shootings. “Guns don’t kill people,” the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre said at a news conference. “Video games, the media and Obama’s budget kill people.”

Now, I fall into the opposite camp. I’d argue that violent video games do not in any way cause real world violence. Some games are tasteless and unthinking in their violence, and sometimes that goes too far in my opinion; but even then, I believe this is a shortcoming in the art rather than the harbinger of violent behavior.

On the other hand, violent people or disturbed young people with violent inclinations may gravitate toward violent video games and other violent media. Thus it’s really no surprise when a school shooter also played violent video games; likewise it’s no surprise that millions of other young people play those same games without ever shooting a gun at all in real life.

Of course, for those who don’t play video games this can be a less graspable concept. “The violence in the entertainment culture — particularly, with the extraordinary realism to video games, movies now, et cetera — does cause vulnerable young men to be more violent,” Sen. Joe Lieberman said after the Newtown shootings.

Lieberman, remember, was a strong supporter of several recent wars in which countless real people—both American and foreign—have died. He also supports the continued drone warfare in Afghanistan in which untold innocents, including children, are killed on a regular basis.

But of course, to Mr. Lieberman, it’s not our violent foreign policy that causes young people to be violent, it’s the video games, the rock and roll, the counter-culture, the comic books. Whatever cultural bogey men we can conjure up at the moment.

Not to be left out of the fray, Donald Trump tweeted “Video game violence & glorification must be stopped — it is creating monsters!” Trump then demanded to see the birth certificates of all the violent video games supposedly made here in the United States.

Studies, of course, will tell you whatever you want to hear. Smart people on both sides of the debate will come armed with all the relevant data points.

“I point the finger unreservedly at the entertainment industry, which has spawned and cultivated gaming that by design is increasingly real, geared to action as the shooter’s point of view, increasingly dehumanizes victims, and increasingly rewards players by how many they kill,” said forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner recently. As chairman of the Forensic Panel, Welner’s statement isn’t exactly the rambling tweet of a raving prima donna. He’s the sort of authority one could appeal to if one wanted rhetorical oomph on their side.

Welner could point to studies like this one (PDF) from Iowa State Professor Craig A. Anderson suggesting “that violent video games increase aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and aggressive behaviors and decrease empathic feelings and prosocial behaviors.”

Furthermore, violent crime in other industrialized nations has not increased as more and more young people play video games. Nor do we see the same type of frequent mass shootings in other wealthy countries as we see in the United States, even though the citizens of those countries consume the exact same violent media and play the same monster-creating games.

Nathan Grayson has a very thoughtful piece on video game violence over at Rock Paper Shotgun suggesting that the trick for both gamers and game-makers is to be more aware of the violence we encounter (or create) in video games.

“I don’t think gaming causes violence,” writes Grayson, “but it would be impossible for frequent immersion in violent scenarios – fictional or not – to not have some kind of effect on us. We’re humans. We’re molded by our environment. Between games and movies and TV and commercials and billboards and everything else, Western (and especially American) culture treats violence like it’s perfectly normal. It’s just… there. All the time.”

This dovetails a bit with my piece on video games and parenting in which I argue that parents, not the government, have a responsibility to censor the types of games their children encounter and to talk about games and other media with their children (and consume the media their children consume, too!) This is all part of the importance of being aware.

“Parents who care about the matter can readily evaluate the games their children bring home,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote when the Supreme Court deemed California’s video game censorship bill unconstitutional. “Filling the remaining modest gap in concerned-parents’ control can hardly be a compelling state interest.”

I rarely agree with Scalia, but as they say, even a stopped clock’s right twice a day. And I tend to agree with Grayson quite a bit, but his piece, no matter how thought-provoking, still leaves me feeling ambivalent.

Why, for instance, does Grayson call out American culture especially?

This is what puzzles me most about this conversation. I agree with Nathan—we should be more aware and we should demand better writing from our video games that makes violence more meaningful. But we play the same games as the Brits or the Germans or the Japanese (well, mostly the same games anyways) and yet here we are, always waiting for the next horror story to emerge.

Is it the fact that we have so many guns? Is it because of our aggressive foreign policy? Is it our car culture with our long commutes and atomized suburban lifestyle? Is it our ethos of mindless individualism? Is it our lack of a comprehensive healthcare policy that fails to take mental health issues seriously? Where should we point the finger?

Because the problem with pointing it at violent film and violent video games is that we can control for that on a global scale. And when we do we see that this problem is largely an American one and is largely not an issue with crime. Violent crime has fallen steadily even as mass shootings have increased. Given the number of gamers out there, one would suspect violent crime to increase dramatically along with the increase in gaming.

Awareness is still key. We should demand more from our video games, even if the violence therein is often little more than a frenetic sort of puzzle-solving, and we should demand more from those who make our games in the first place, as well as from gamers whose often overly knee-jerk reaction to this sort of thing only helps to make level-headed conversation impossible.

Somewhere between heat and light there is a balance, whether or not there are any good answers.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

Our elderly population, especially now with their disproportionate demographic, wields alot of voter power. They don’t want to hear that their parenting skills were a problem, or that their children’s parenting skills are a problem, it has to be something else. Those kids spend alot of time doing (Insert media), it must be (media) forcing them to do these terrible things!

40 years ago it was Ozzy, then it was Dungeons and Dragons, then it was video games. They want something to demonize other than themselves, and the politicians are more than happy to give it to them if it’ll get them votes.

Our Geriatric population has grown up on sensationalized stories of how everything that goes wrong is some kind of satanic conspiracy propigated through some kind of media. They love this stuff, and they love it when a politician promises to swoop in and make things like they were in 1950 again.

A lot of the problems of our society stem from what the people 40+ have done and continue to do, place the blame on others extensively. I’ve believed this since about 9th grade, realizing that the blame isn’t on the youth, it’s on the ones who make the policies, the people who’ve been around to change the world longer than I’ve been alive.

Don’t generalize. I know quite a few 40+ people, myself included, that play these games. We no more blame video games than we blame movies, tv shows, music, etc. People in countries with far less gun violence play, watch, listen, etc to all of them. I believe it is the immature American Culture that has not got beyond “I see England, I see France…..” that is to blame more than anything. Watch Micheal Moore’s Bowling For Columbine, that movie is a real eye-opener.

“Is it the fact that we have so many guns? Is it because of our aggressive foreign policy? Is it our car culture with our long commutes and atomized suburban lifestyle? Is it our ethos of mindless individualism? Is it our lack of a comprehensive healthcare policy that fails to take mental health issues seriously? Where should we point the finger?”

***

The answer is poverty, both real (as in difficulty surviving day to day) and relative/perceived (you can’t afford to buy a car, but everyone else can). In developed countries real poverty is unusual (although alas several governments seem to be doing their very best to change this). So the key factor is relative/perceived ‘poverty’ – in context this would cover apparent lack of control or power. Or there being those who ‘have’ power, money and control while you don’t. Power and money have always been connected, and in ‘democratic’ Western countries this is rather apparent by the background of most leaders – has there been any President of the US, for example, who did not come from a rich (or well off) family?

As to why entertainment media get the blame, well its a lot easier for those in government to blame something other than themselves. And they tend to pick on things that have little or no political pull – when was the last time they blamed NEWS media…?

Computer games are an easy target, as they still have the stigma of being for ‘kids’ even though the rating on the boxes says otherwise. Before that they blamed films, which had lost the political clout they had enjoyed in earlier decades and were starting to be available on tape for home viewing. And before that it was music, to which the same applied – a form of entertainment people could enjoy at home and over which there was limited control over. And of course the internet has taken fire for the same reason as games.

It is easier to blame these things, than admit that the problems really stem from those who hold the reigns of power.

America is a nation built on Bravado. Right through might. Justice delivered by an iron fist. He who yells the loudest, punches the hardest or carries the biggest gun gets to make the rules and decides who’s right or wrong. It’s a nation who’s culture has been built around making heros out of gangsters whose violent lives and criminal lifestyles have been romanticized and idealized.

Money, power, women, respect. Yeah dawg, the gangsta lifestyle. Even 10 year old kids see it and [try to] live it.

Video games and movies don’t influence behavior. That’s the job of commercials and TV ads. There can be no influence without benefit. My hair will be fluffy and shiny if I buy a certain brand of shampoo. My stomach will be full and my wallet will be happy if I buy a burger and fries. But I’ve yet to see a movie or play a game that even remotely suggested any sort of real-world benefit to picking up a gun and randomly shooting people.

Movies and video games are about romantic, idealistic notions. They’re fantasies where the underdog always wins regardless of the odds stacked against him, where the ends always justify the means, where right through might makes sense and never fails, where I can but for a moment live that life without consequence. And who doesn’t love a great fantasy? Real life doesn’t work like that though.

We don’t blame the car nor do we blame the alcohol when a drunk driver kills someone. We blame the driver.

The answer isn’t in banning violent movies and games just as much as the answer isn’t in banning guns.

To me the answer is about personal responsibility and accountability. It’s about knowing and understanding the difference between right and wrong and knowing you will be held accountable for your actions. It’s being taught how to solve problems without fists or guns.

Or maybe Wayne LaPierre is right, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” In which case these good guys are going to need to see a lot more movies and play a lot more games.

Reading through all the comments so far i tend to agree with them all in degrees. And because of that it tells me that these may very well be symptoms associated with a greater issue.

As humans we look around us and use the knowledge we have gained to try to make sense of the sheer variety of perspectives and ways of living we see. This is why there are so many different religions, political parties and forms of governments in the world and depending on which forms we are raised with, bias inevitably plays an important role.

There is no way of knowing if one is better or more correct without first knowing them all intimately and then i believe on top of that naturally comes the need to know the needs of our environment, life (be it animal or vegetable) and the functioning of our planet and an appreciation of universe around us. THEN we have a basis for making decisions that will benefit all life on this planet as a whole. But as we know, no such being/machine exists that can consider all these aspects….yet.

So when an industry/medium like gaming comes along that is only around 40 yrs old as opposed to the hundreds in some cases thousands of years of established traditions/governmantal/religious bodies that seem so fundamental and unquestionable or percieved as infallible even, that gaming as an entity can be seen as a loose cannon in comparison, simply because it has not been around long enough for the established powers that be to decide if it is something that is owned by them or is in fact a danger to them by it’s very existance. Hence why as Erik outlined rock and roll, comics and the like have been traditionally been the easy scapegoats for problems instead of perhaps taking another look at what is fundamental as perhaps in fact owning the blame for current issues. Heaven forbid that can of worms!

And lets not forget the power games have. They have the ability to inform first hand almost the repurcussions of actions our avatar makes whether they be “good” or “bad” (eg. rescuing someone from danger or ourselves becoming the perpetrator of a violent crime against someone else) By doing so we have the opportunity to get a taste of these life lessons, without the consequences we would have to deal with in real life. It is a very valuable tool to be able to “wear the shoes” of someone else like that. I feel this is a positive medium that can teach us much about ourselves and those around us.

Which brings me to think that perhaps this window to knowledge and different perspectives may present a threat to the other established mediums of information dispersal like religion, politics (governmental and commercial) and the news networks/television networks. Since such a powerful medium like gaming is currently not owned or regulated by the established powers that be and seen as a possible/probable conflict of interests with the status quo. (much like a free internet)

Well here we go again… looks like the NRA has gotten to many in the media again to push this BS notion that even thought these same video games are in every other country in the world that somehow it magically only effects people in the US. Because we are the only country in the world that has, like clockwork, mass shootings over and over again. It’s a load of crap. It’s deflection, and it’s WRONG. The ONLY difference between us and these other countries is here in the US we have unprecedented access to guns, and ridiculously LAX gun laws. Let’s not deflect, let’s talk about what’s killing these people… GUNS. You can’t shoot someone without one. FORBES is negligent even printing this trash, there have been many recent studies showing NO correlation between video games and these shootings… shame on you for printing this BS.

wo, my bad. I must have replied to 20 articles in the past 48 hours that is linking gaming to violence for no other reason than the NRA President says it’s so… so I admit I just started typing in a rage… boy, I have egg on my face.

Generally speaking, I think most of the things blamed for violence are convenient scapegoats used to further political agendas. As this is primarily a video game blog, I’ll try to keep my political opinions out of it except to say that I think blaming video games is incredibly stupid. Yes, a disturbed individual may gravitate toward violent media, but I think that has been true long before the advent of video games. And there are tens of millions of people who play video games without ever doing anything violent. I count myself among them. I have no idea how many human video game enemies I’ve killed over the years. It’s a lot. But I’ve never attacked anyone physically in real life, nor have I wanted to. When I hear people (Bill O’Reilly, I’m looking at you) say asinine things about how shooting people in video games makes it easier to shoot people in real life, I wonder if they’ve ever played a video game in their lives. In a video game, I have zero hesitation pulling the trigger on a head shot or unloading a clip into an enemy because I know it’s not real. I’ve never shot anything other than a target in real life, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve even held a gun. I can’t even imagine shooting someone in real life, and no video game is going to change that.